Activision has applied for a trademark for the title DJ Hero, which has prompted rumors of a new music game that could be a lot like Konami's Beatmania series.

For those of you that don't know what Beatmania is, feast your eyes on this:

That's on auto-play, but each of those dropping notes corresponds to a button on the controller to the right:

It would be very likely that any US version of this type of game from Activision would skew more toward popular music and established electronic & hip-hop artists, but who knows at this point.

The trademark refers to "computer game software and related instruction manual sold together as a unit; interactive video game programs; computer game discs; downloadable software for use in connection with computer games; video game controllers; interactive video game comprised of a CD or DVD sold as a unit with a video game controller."

ArsTechnica: Activision applies for DJ Hero trademark